Where did this idea come from?

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Reading through the earlier thread about the 'drama community', I found this from eridanusus, which got me thinking.

"They keep saying people can't talk to each other and stuff obviously they never even read Sybil or When Rabbit Howls or anything! Because they talk to each other in those. And don't they think if someone WAS gonna go "ooh I'm going to fake having multiple personalities" they'd actually do some research so they DIDN'T get it all wrong?"

Maybe I'm giving the wannabe 'experts' too much credit by assuming they've done any reading at all, rather than simply going on hearsay, but it's a good question. Where did the idea come from? 'Mutual unawareness of others' existence' is not and has never been in the diagnostic criteria for either MPD or DID. Even in some of the early 'dual personality' cases described (Mary Reynolds, and Gmelin's patient whose other self spoke fluent French), at least one person was aware of the other's existence, even if the awareness wasn't mutual.

What many of the popular and sensationalistic accounts *do* describe is a 'presenting self' who was unaware of the others and experienced the periods when they were controlling the body as blackouts, while the 'others,' when they were in charge, were not only aware of each other's existence but had varying levels of communication between themselves. Books like "Sybil" and "The Minds of Billy Milligan" give *extremely* clear descriptions of internal communication taking place between selves (i.e. Vicki telling Peggy to "put the dish down" when she wanted to break it). Even if the usual frontrunner knew nothing, that's still a pretty far cry from 'nobody can talk to anyone else.'

In fact, for a while, one of the things some doctors were *specifically* told to ask patients when evaluating for an MPD or DID diagnosis, was whether they 'heard voices.' (Granted, this is an extremely flimsy criterion on which to base the diagnosis-- one has to distinguish between the internal 'voices' that many multiples experience and auditory hallucinations-- but I think I've already made pretty clear my distrust of most professional ideas about multiplicity.)

Virtually every popular account of multiplicity published during the 80s and 90s ends with, if not integration, the attainment of at least some sort of communication between everyone. There were some books published during this time by-- yes, therapists with degrees-- with titles like "Working with the Family Inside" and "Internal Family Systems Therapy," which emphasized communication and awareness as a viable alternative to integration for some multiples. So, even supposing that only a portion of these more sensationalized cases were real, the claim that "in real multiplicity the personalities don't know about each other" still doesn't hang together. I'd take this more seriously if anyone could quote a single source, but no one seems to be able to.

So, where did 'they can't talk to each other' come from? I'm actually curious.

Comments

[squnq.livejournal.com]

Probably movies or sensationalized cases where a specific system member committed a heinous crime, but the system's frontrunner or "core" was not aware of it and became a protagonist against both their antagonistic system peers and the justice system.

It makes for decent drama.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Well, I saw where someone had apparently taken "Fight Club" to be an authoritative source... @_@ I wonder if I have too much faith in humanity, to still be capable of amazement when someone reaches adulthood without realizing that not everything on TV is necessarily true.

[squnq.livejournal.com]

I have too little faith - IMHO things will get worse before they get better, if they ever do.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Our impression was that it came from the Milligan case. Those people did not always have communication with one another -- not just with Billy himself. They knew about each other, but they were so separate they couldn't account for what happened any better than he could. Example: someone gets paid, puts the money on the dresser intending to pay bills with it. Next person comes out, sees money and pays the bills. Next person comes out "Didn't we get paid this week? How are we going to pay the bills?" Person who got paid comes out, "Oh shit, where's the money I was going to use to pay the bills? Did those dopes spend it all on ice cream?" Some of Ragen's robberies were committed because of this kind of situation.

This came up in the trial several times and made it into the book. "Aren't we all different people inside? Aren't we all, to some extent, multiple personalities?" Reply from The Expert: "The difference is the amnesia." This was also repeated on a lot of The Talk Shows.

Uh huh. Right.

[squnq.livejournal.com]

I can assert that in some more clinical cases, amnesia/blackouts are documented more often. For instance, in my "case", I have gaps in my memory and occasionally am unaware of what happened if someone else fronts, although very seldomly.

Disordered cases of systems which have no internal communication end up in therapy, I suppose, because the system ends up mixed up in the same manner as the Milligan case and gets negative attention as a result, then ends up in therapy for DID, which is what happened with me. So it can be assumed that the base of clinical cases is biased towards "classical" types where there are blackouts etc, simply because systems which aren't fucked up don't get the attention of parents/peers/therapists and can exist without outside intervention.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"Aren't we all different people inside? Aren't we all, to some extent, multiple personalities?" Reply from The Expert: "The difference is the amnesia."

Well, y'know, maybe it's true; maybe everyone is born with the potential to be multiple, and singlets are only singlets because they've been programmed since childhood to think they're "supposed to be" only one person.

There's not one shred of evidence that the DID/MPD theories are correct. It may be that all the supposedly "trauma-split" people would have turned out just as multiple if no trauma had occurred. Y'know, not very long ago it was fashionable to blame both homosexuality and autism on "childhood experiences", but you don't see that so much these days. Perhaps it'll eventually be the same with multiplicity.

*shrugs* 'Amnesia', pff. All through childhood, I got in trouble for stuff Crist-Erui did, that I couldn't stop him from doing. I learned by kindergarten that telling the truth would just get me punished for lying - "blaming my imaginary friend" - so I shut up about him, but really, what was I supposed to do? I didn't "not know what happened" - I knew perfectly well, because after all, I was there, and a lot of times I'd been trying desperately to persuade him to behave, but he didn't listen to me worth a damn.

Of course, when someone asked me, "why were you late? why did you not show up? why didn't you stay where you were supposed to be? why are you soaked to the skin? what happened to your coat and shoes?" I'd have no choice but to say "I don't know". Children don't have the right to remain silent; silence is punished almost as severely as the telling of unacceptable truth, so lying was the only option, and no one can prove that "I don't know" is a lie.

[saturniakitty.livejournal.com]

I always got in a lot of trouble for being unable to give a better answer than "I don't know" when I did something I wasn't supposed to >_

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too, but I would've gotten in a lot more trouble if I'd said "it wasn't ME; I told him and told him we needed to go home/go to school/not abandon our shoes in the woods/whatever, but he just kept on going." Better to just take whatever punishment's going to be dished out, because trying to avoid it only prolongs the trouble.

[karma-silenced.livejournal.com]

"Uhh... I read Jekyll and Hyde in 7th grade... :)"

[qilora.livejournal.com]

actually, what it makes us think of, is the fact that the "movies" and TV-shows just *love* to show those systems who are all split off from each other... know what i mean?

super-drama.

maybe that is making the impression with the suppose'd-experts on all this...

Ulla & Co.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

*cherishes your icon*

[qilora.livejournal.com]

yup. poor Cyril :-/

Ulla.

[jhonathand.livejournal.com]

You know I would have to pose the same question,...

My Brothers can talk to each other just fine, and me. We have internal dialouges and even discussions with each other and vice versa. It doesn't happen all the time, but it does occur.

"In fact, for a while, one of the things some doctors were *specifically* told to ask patients when evaluating for an MPD or DID diagnosis, was whether they 'heard voices.'"

:-I hate the fact that Doctors were told to ask that,. How could an Objective observer truely know weather a person was telling the truth about the statement, "Do you hear voices?" ,.? Honestly.

:-I'm sorry I support your post and understand it. I don't mean to be antagonistic,. I think I'm confused.

:-Even with the vast resources of the entire Internet at 'our' disposal, I can't seem to find any refrence to the summary that 'One personallity can't talk to another'. I have come to belive that it is just a mis-nomer and mis-information, and probably held as a Phallicie from the era of, oh, let's say,...............Dr. Totenkopf, Dr. Totenkopf Line one please.

:-I'm sure that at some point there was a hypothesies in the medical society that said that, but it is probably lost in some filing cabinent in some storeroom some where in a college.

~M/Frost/Jake~

[inshadowhiding.livejournal.com]

or the scenario :

(dr) have you ever heard voices?
( vict, er, patient) yes, i can hear you now

:P

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

It's like that part in Ghostbusters:

Ray: Gozer the Destroyer? Good evening. On behalf of the city, county, and state of New York, I request that you cease all paranormal activity and return to your place of origin or to the nearest parallel dimension.
Peter: That oughta do it, nice one Ray
Gozer: Are you a god?
Ray: Uh...no.
Gozer: Then......die!
(Gozer begins shocking the Ghostbusters with lightning)
Winston: Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say "yes"!

.... for precisely the same reason, when someone asks you if you 'hear voices', you say "no".

...

[bobert-mcbob.livejournal.com]

Guess "sometimes" wasn't the right answer then. I've been seeing a councellor/psychologist for a couple months now because of depression, and he asked me if I ever heard voices. I told him the truth, sometimes, but it's not that often. He, and the psychiatrist I saw as well, didn't seem to think anything of it.
Anyways, I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make here, so I'll stop now.
Also, I'm a singlet as far as I know, but pro-multiple.

Re: ...

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"He, and the psychiatrist I saw as well, didn't seem to think anything of it."

It's most likely in your records now, though, and once they've got something like that, you never know when it's going to come back and haunt you.

Re: ...

[bobert-mcbob.livejournal.com]

Great.
I am sometimes too truthful, if that's possible.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

We knew a group that that happened to. The frontrunner presented as a multiple, when seeking help for a problem not related to multiplicity (she had anxiety or something). Her people were very supportive of her and she thought she'd get better counseling if all her people were in on it. The doctor said "Do you hear voices?" Thinking he meant was her normal, everyday hearing okay, she said yes. The next thing she knows she's got a conditional diagnosis as a schizophrenic who is "fascinated with the idea of multiple personalities". Never got any help with the anxiety at all as far as we know.

[luwana.livejournal.com]

People unaware of each other pull more ratings for books and TV.

People unaware of each other are more likely to go "wtf is going on" and go to a therapist.


Thus, both more pop culture and scientific documentation of cases where people are unaware.

Even if people aware each other were to come out to a therapist, it is highly unlikely that the therapist would want to make a serious study out of their multiplicity. Yet another reason there's less scientific documentation of it.

These are examples of logic I certainly don't expect people in that drahmah entry to grasp or accept.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

There actually isn't much scientific study or documentation of anything related to multiplicity-- not always because it couldn't be found, but because even when the diagnosis was a fad, it was still considered somewhat fringe and highly disputable, and few 'reputable' doctors were willing to do studies of it; the subject itself was considered 'unscientific.' But it's quite true that the 'troubled' groups are the ones who come to the attention of doctors, as was the case with homosexuality a few decades ago.

Still, though, one would be tempted to think that at least some of the aspiring experts could have been bothered to do their own research if they were so very intrigued by the subject. That's what I don't get. Even if they had glanced at some of the popular books like Sybil and When Rabbit Howls, they'd have run across descriptions of in-system communication.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

All the "research" and "study" of multiples was anecdotal -- they gathered and published info from their clients. So the clients reported what was true for them, and there you have it, like squnq and others are saying here, those are the people who go into therapy, the doctors never see anyone else.

It really showed how moronic modern psychiatry is, when they came to all the erroneous conclusions about multiplicity based on this incredibly small, biased sampling; things like "multiplicity is never seen anywhere but in a psychiatrist's office, therefore it's iatrogenic", or "therefore all multiples are sick", plus the idea that "REAL multiples are this way or that way because all MY clients were", I mean come on, where's the proof? You can't make a reductionist assumption like that based solely on your own experiences with one itty-bitty subgroup. Did they bother to LOOK for multiplicity outside their office? Why assume that "most people" or "normal people" or the guys who ride with you on the subway or whatever, are all singlets just because their activities of daily living are not impaired?

Psychology, esp. psychoanalysis, was never a science, it is a kind of art of counseling people based on theories that are more like the "laws" of physics -- observing human behavior and what seems to be normal (the best ones keep in mind that "normal" can actually be a hell of a lot of things), and using those observations to hopefully provide insight as to why the client (and the client's friends & family) act the way they do. As such, they pretty much make it up as they go along; the best ones are intuitive and, like Henry Miller said, all you really have to be is a good listener. The whole thing started out in the seance room, they just jumped on the "science" bandwagon because they thought they were learning and contributing valuable information about the way behavior works and the way the mind, body and (yes) soul interact (William James). Social control has passed from the churches to the psychs because of all the people who want to be led, want someone else to solve all the answers for them, but have lost faith in religion.

Now with what's been happening with the scandals about medication and this No Child Left Alone Behind thing, I think that in the next few years, something is gonna blow. People will stand for an awful lot of shit, but I still think that eventually what happened in Australia will happen here. It's like music downloading -- the lawyers who control the record companies can't stop it, so they'll have to come up with ways to accommodate it.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

As such, they pretty much make it up as they go along; the best ones are intuitive and, like Henry Miller said, all you really have to be is a good listener.

Yeah. We've generally gotten more help from compassionate friends, when we've had problems in our life, than we ever have from therapists.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"Why assume that "most people" or "normal people" or the guys who ride with you on the subway or whatever, are all singlets just because their activities of daily living are not impaired?"

Damn straight. And why would they 'come out' as multiple when what that would get them is accusations of being insane and/or a lying attention-whore? Especially people with families to think of, or the kind of job where one's success is contingent on leading a conventional life... they would have to be crazy to risk letting such information fall into unfriendly hands.

Not that it's necessarily safe to let it fall into presumably-friendly hands either. Your S.O. loves you now; that's great, but suppose ten years from now you're locked in a no-holds-barred custody battle? Your parents want only the best for you; they'll do whatever your shrink tells them to do, which may well be to send you off to the looney-bin. Your friends say they believe you and don't think you're crazy, but are they telling the truth or are they just humoring you? You'll never know... unless, of course, you have a falling-out, and then you may hear from your other friends what your former friend thought all along but never told you.

That's the kind of "attention" that's likely to be bestowed upon anyone who admits to sharing a body with other people, no matter how amicably, no matter how quiet and responsible a life one leads. So there could be as many multiples walking around as there are gay people, and no one would ever know it because most of them will never tell anyone.

"People will stand for an awful lot of shit, but I still think that eventually what happened in Australia will happen here."

Umm, what did happen?

[chorus-of-chaos.livejournal.com]

In fact, for a while, one of the things some doctors were *specifically* told to ask patients when evaluating for an MPD or DID diagnosis, was whether they 'heard voices.'

One therapist told me the easy way to describe the difference between DID and shizo was "DID the voices are IN your head, Shizo the voices are coming from outside your head."

That said....I was initially diagnosed shizo and poisoned (I become psychotic on anti-psychotics) because of the "hearing talking sometimes" thing.

Virtually every popular account of multiplicity published during the 80s and 90s ends with, if not integration, the attainment of at least some sort of communication between everyone

we call it co-conciousness. I've not been able to find any case history of "integration" ever actually lasting for more than a few years...in every case I've read about/heard about at some point the person refractured under a great deal of stress.

[laurenthemself]

I think Sybil stayed integrated, not sure how long it was for though.

Maybe every system on the community should write their own stories. They might not be novel-length, although I'm sure some would be, but we could make a book of stories...

I don't know, I'm just speculating here.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Ours would be novel-length, but nobody would believe it. I have to admit that if it was someone else's tale, I wouldn't believe it either.

LOL, so for the past half-dozen years or so, I've been working sporadically on this fantasy-adventure saga about these three Elves - Elenbarathi, Duathir and Crist-Erui - to whom all kinds of bizarre stuff happens. Hey, it's fantasy, right? Spells and dragons and enchanted artifacts and a castle the size of Asia floating in the plane of Limbo; nobody past grade-school believes that kind of thing for one second. *grins* So I can write some of the truth about how it is with me and my bro's without anybody being able to give us shit for it: "it's only a story!"

[littlebus.livejournal.com]

I started making plans for a comic book, but it got too confusing and wouldn't make sence to more than a handful of people. I might try again sometime in the future.

I feel I'd have to change names though, to protect the innocent, and those who don't know about them.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

According to people who knew Shirley Mason (Sybil), the integration lasted only a few years. She 'let the others come back,' because she was lonely without them.

Heh, a couple of us have actually tentatively attempted writing our stories in fictionalised forms, with some names and details changed. One of them could actually be long enough to reach novel-length; we'll see how that goes. What I do remember is that ever since we were young, we would often take the names of people in here and use them for characters in stories. "How'd you come up with that name?" "Oh, just thought of it...."

[laurenthemself]

Ha. I always felt that the book didn't tell the whole story.

As for naming characters after system members, I have one lovely young lady here who has become a kind of quintessential Mary Sue, in that her name crops up in quite a few of my fan fictions if I need an original character for whatever reason. I write for a variety of fandoms, but it'd be interesting to see if any of my readers ever noticed...

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

The character-names in my interminable fantasy Saga aren't our names - they're Sindarin (Tolkien's Elvish), and like most Sindarin names, are actually descriptive titles: "Star-woman", "Shadowlord" and "First Sword" (which is a term from a totally non-Tolkienian fandom, and basically means "second in command".)

Kír doesn't think much of the Saga. He doesn't really favor fantasy, for one thing; for another, he doesn't care for the way I've portrayed 'his' character: too painfully accurate in some ways and too irritatingly inaccurate in others.

He also doesn't like it that the name Crist-Erui has 'stuck' to his twin, who has none of his own. What can I say; now that our wild, shy brother actually has some friends, they have to call him something, even if he doesn't answer to it. The name Kír isn't a real name either; it's a shortened form of what his twin calls him, the meaning of which we've never known. He chose that as his use-name because he didn't want people calling him Duathir.

Me, I don't care if people call me Jess, Jessadriel, Elenbarathi, Elen, or any of my assorted other nick-names, use-names or online handles. I do admit that the character Elenbarathi in my Saga is a "Mary Sue", if that term can apply to a non-fanfic character: she's *me* as I'd be if I were a 1500-year-old Elf of royal lineage, with incomparable healing powers and a whole lot of other magic. LOL, hey, I know it's vain and frivolous, but I figure when I'm writing for myself, I can write whatever I want. It really is just a story, after all.

[saturniakitty.livejournal.com]

One therapist told me the easy way to describe the difference between DID and shizo was "DID the voices are IN your head, Shizo the voices are coming from outside your head."
That's how I describe it to people who don't know the difference.

[enigma-system.livejournal.com]

I became psychotic on anti-psychotics too! :( It was/is scary...

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

hell we know two people who became psychotic on even mild antidepressants, couldn't take'em!

[manifold]

enigma_system and chorus_of_chaos, you have taken a great weight off of my chest. It's one thing to be told that one's personal experience was possible; it's another to find other people who experienced it as well, and can mention it without shame.

Thank you.

[enigma-system.livejournal.com]

(: I'm glad that we can help you not be ashamed.

[kiya]

I've not been able to find any case history of "integration" ever actually lasting for more than a few years...in every case I've read about/heard about at some point the person refractured under a great deal of stress.

I know a couple of folks who considered themselves multiple for a period of their lives and reintegrated when the factors that made multiplicity a useful adaptation for them went away. Of course, there's a double selection bias there -- people who aren't likely to be in medical treatment over being multiple and who aren't likely to hang in multiple communities.